Top Echelon Contracting has posted a lot on this blog about Social Media Web sites and how many of the recruiters we work with on contract placements are using these sites in their recruiting efforts. Sites such as LinkedIn® and Facebook can open up a whole new world of qualified, and often passive, candidates and can be a great way to evaluate them. But recruiters using these tools must proceed with caution.
A recent article on The Fordyce Letter‘s blog points out some of the risks involved in using Social Media sites for recruiting. The good news is that Social Media sites can help recruiters and their clients learn more about their candidates. The bad news is, it can provide too much information. There are numerous state and federal laws that prohibit making employment decisions based on a candidate’s race, religion, sexual orientation, and other protected informaton. This type of information is usually not revealed in a resume and may not even be obvious in a face-to-face interview but may be easily accessible on a person’s Social Media profile. It’s easy for a client not to make employment decisions on information they don’t know, but how do they ignore it once they’ve seen it?
One such example presented in the article was a candidate who was nearly hired in the first round of interviews with a recruiter’s client. Both the recruiter and the client saw her Facebook profile that indicated she was three months pregnant, which meant she would be on maternity leave during the company’s busiest season. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act makes it illegal to refuse employment to a woman just because she is pregnant. So if the client decided at that point not to hire her, she could sue if she suspected that her pregnancy played into the decision, and the client could have a hard time proving that her pregnancy wasn’t the reason she was disqualified. But if the client hired her, they would put themselves in a tough situation when the busy season hit.
So does this mean you shouldn’t use these valuable recruiting tools? No. It just means you need to use a little caution when doing so. Clients often depend on you to gather and present information about candidates to them. When doing so, do the best you can to only search for information relevant to the job duties required. The article suggests that you make it clear with your clients up-front that you will only search for job-related information and that you will comply with all anti-discrimination regulations.
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